


Less Than I Thought

by telm_393



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Dysphoria, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, No Apocalypse (Umbrella Academy), Past Child Abuse, Poetry, Suicide, Suicide Notes, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 07:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Diego and Vanya, in the aftermath.And beforehand:An explanation for Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben, and Vanyaby Luther Hargreeves(who’s never going to adjust to life after the accident and the Academy, and has decided to stop trying.)





	Less Than I Thought

**Author's Note:**

> Look, Luther writes poetry, and I was like "lol I'm gonna write some of Luther's poetry" and then this happened. 
> 
> Absolutely mind the tags. 
> 
> I hope it goes without saying that this is Luther friendly and friendly to all of the Hargreeves siblings, but I am saying it anyway. There's a lot of guilt and complicated feelings and regret and self-blame here, but there are no villains. 
> 
> (Though Reginald doesn't come out looking great.)
> 
> Thank you to within_a_dream for alpha+beta reading!

Diego has his hands around a coffee mug filled with scotch. The bottle’s in front of him, almost empty.

It must’ve been Dad’s at some point, but Diego took it from Five.

Five fought him on that for a moment, right up until Diego pointed out that if Five kept drinking liquor like water in his fourteen year old body, he was gonna get alcohol poisoning, and Diego wasn’t interested in losing another brother. At that, Five’s face crumpled, and he jumped away before Diego could see him cry.

Diego wandered off to the kitchen and sat down at the table, feeling aimless. Before he did, he poured himself some of the scotch, because maybe Five’s got the right idea, maybe being drunk all the time is the way to go. The memorial service sure would’ve been more bearable if Diego’d been tipsy like Five already was, standing under the pale sun at ten in the morning.

Diego hasn’t even taken a sip of the whiskey, because he’s smart enough to know that Five doesn’t have the right idea. He’s just running away. It seems to be a habit among Diego’s brothers.

From downstairs, Diego can hear Klaus scream, “Come on, I am stone- _fucking-_ cold sober, how are you not here?!”

Diego closes his eyes and counts to ten, and when he opens his eyes, he’s exactly where he was, sitting at the kitchen table.

Luther kept to himself. There were some heart-to-hearts at first, when they all tried to hash things out so that they wouldn’t end up causing the apocalypse after all. There were apologies all around, so Luther apologized too. For not listening to them, for screwing up so spectacularly with Vanya. And they forgave him. Even Vanya.

But then Luther just kept to himself.

Number One on his pedestal, and they were all too busy with each other to reach out, especially because things were just awkward with him. Even with the apologies, everything that had led up to the almost-apocalypse still felt raw, and no one really knew what to say about Luther’s new body, whether they should say anything at all, and he was still the one who never got away. Still Dad’s Number One. It was always something that set him apart from them, and it still did.

They thought he wanted to work through things alone. Diego’s going to stand by that, because it sounds better than anything that’s closer to the truth.

Diego sits at the kitchen table, and Luther’s not here, and that’s normal. What’s not normal is that Luther’s not in the house. He’s not in his room listening to his records or taking long-distance calls from Allison and Claire. Tonight he won’t be at the dinner table pretending to smile. Luther’s not anywhere, and the thought opens a gash in Diego’s chest, it breaks his ribs and spreads them apart and tears his heart out.

Diego thought he was doing such a good fucking job reconnecting with his siblings, even Allison all the way over in Los Angeles, but he left someone out and now he’s never going to get the chance to actually talk to his brother ever again.

 _It’s too late._ Luther wrote that in his note, the poem he left on his bedside table.

When he wrote those words, it wasn’t too late, and the thought makes Diego want to scream. If he’d just _seen it,_ if he’d just _heard it,_ if he’d _known,_ it would never have been too late.

Wood scrapes against wood, and Diego looks up as Vanya pulls out a chair and sits across from him. She hasn’t done a great job of wiping away her tears.

“You look horrible,” Diego grunts.

“So do you,” Vanya says. The exchange is easy, and it makes Diego feel guilty.

Talking to Luther was never easy. In the earlier days, their conversations always ended in arguments, and trying to reconcile just led to them talking less.

Diego gave up on Luther over a decade ago when he begged him to leave home with him, to leave Dad, because Dad was a monster, Dad was going to ruin him, and Luther just took it as a betrayal and stood his ground. Diego guesses that after that it got easy to give up on Luther.

“He was fucked up, Vanya,” Diego says, breaking the heavy silence that’s fallen over the kitchen. “I told him, one day he was gonna regret staying, and he did, and I just...fuck, I still never thought he was a bad person or a monster.” _How could he think that?_

Vanya’s eyes shine. “I know.”

“Fucking Dad,” Diego says, bitterness in his voice. It’s the same bitterness he’s been feeling his whole life, but now it hurts like salt in a wound. “What he did to him.” He shakes his head, and finally says what he’s been dying to say since he read Luther’s poem. “How the fuck did we ignore it? His body was torturing him, and we just…never brought it up. Never asked how he felt about getting fucking mutilated. I apologized for saying some shit about it to him, and then nothing.”

“He didn’t talk about it,” Vanya says, voice shaking. “We thought he didn’t want to talk about it.”

“He never talked about anything,” Diego spits out. He slumps in his chair and rolls his neck to look at the ceiling, trying to keep tears from falling. “He never talked about anything, and we never talked to him even though there was something wrong. I know we barely fucking knew each other, but come on. He was in his room all day, getting heatstroke from all those layers, and, what, we were just like, oh, yeah, classic Luther? We never even asked how he was doing.”

“Even Allison couldn’t get through to him, Diego…”

“She was in L.A., we were right here. We could’ve pushed, Vanya. We could’ve at least told him none of us think he’s a monster.”

Tears spill from Vanya’s eyes, and she says, “He made a choice. We can’t blame ourselves.”

It’s what a therapist would say. Diego shrugs. It hurts. His entire body hurts. Everything just hurts. He’s not going to be able to keep himself from crying, so he stops looking at the ceiling and looks at Vanya instead. “What else can we do? He’s gone. We all got a second chance with each other, but…no more second chances with Luther.”

Vanya puts her hands over her face, and her shoulders shake. Diego didn’t cry at the memorial service, but now he feels tears run down his face. Through them he mutters, “Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

Vanya’s arms drop to the surface of the table, and she says, voice destroyed, “I wish he’d _talked_ to us. He wrote it all down. We could’ve _helped_ him.”

A sob slips from Diego’s lips, and he scrubs a hand over his face and lets out a broken chuckle. “I didn’t even know he wrote poetry, Vanya.”

Vanya’s breaths shudder, but she manages to talk. “Me neither.”

“He was pretty good,” Diego says.

“Yeah, he was,” Vanya agrees, her voice almost gone.

“He probably could’ve gotten great at it, if he’d stuck around.”

“I wish he had,” Vanya says. “Fuck. I wish he had.”

Diego looks down at the whiskey in his coffee mug. He thinks about what could’ve been, and he can’t breathe.

Diego closes his eyes and counts to ten. When he opens them, it’s still too late.

                     

* * *

                                                                             

 **An explanation for Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben, and Vanya**  
by Luther Hargreeves  
(who’s never going to adjust to life after the accident and the Academy, and has decided to stop trying.)

**i.**

I always wanted to go to space  
but to be an astronaut you can’t be  
over six feet tall  
and I just grew and grew

That was the first time my body killed my dreams  
except even before I passed six foot I knew  
those dreams were empty

I would never be an astronaut  
if that wasn’t what my father wanted from me  
because my future was his and sometimes  
it’s easier to just accept things the way they are

I shouldn’t have  
but I only figured that out  
once I couldn’t ignore the scars

**ii.**

Maybe he really did take away my agency

Maybe I actually was a victim

Maybe it was wrong to deprive me  
of what could’ve been

Because when I finally stood on the moon in all of its majesty  
trapped in a nightmare and stranded in a boyhood dream  
all I could think of were the choices  
I never got the chance to make  
and how easy it would be to decide to let go

In the end I just couldn’t bring myself  
to abandon what little was left

I should’ve abandoned what little was left

There was less than I thought

**iii.**

Some things are beautiful  
and horrifying at the same time

I used to be one of those things  
when I had the body of a prince  
and the strength of a brute

Now I’m just horrifying  
but I don’t know  
if I’m angry about it specifically

It’s not like Dad could’ve asked  
if what I am now  
was something I was willing to be

I meant a lot to him  
and he wanted to save me

**iv.**

I wake up

There’s a stranger in my bed  
and I receive him with disgust

I wake up

I’ll never be something  
anyone could want

I wake up

I am all empty spaces  
and I keep getting lost

**v.**

My body used to be the best part of me

There is no best part of me anymore

**vi.**

I already died years ago  
the moment I woke up alone  
and found myself the monster  
I was born to become

I just want to stop waking up

**vii.**

I’m dangerous  
you know

I hurt people  
because I was doing what I was told

I caught scraps of love  
and still never realized  
how little there was

I hate everything about what I’ve become

I wish I could’ve brought myself to listen  
but instead I spent a lifetime  
so caught up in a brutal game  
that I hardly noticed  
all the bright parts of me suffocate  
in the battles I fought  
and a vial of serum  
and a cold cosmic embrace

I’ve finally noticed

It’s too late

**i.**

I’ve tried and I’ve tried  
and I can’t say I think  
I’ve gained anyone’s trust  
But I’m still asking you to please  
trust me when I tell you  
it’s going to be okay

Because the truth is  
I’m not someone you need  
and you definitely won’t miss me.


End file.
